SoD 10: Psychology of Dying and Death

One of the classes I took during my three-year stint at Moorpark College was a class called Psychology of Dying and Death. The class explored the concepts of dying and death, in art, music, and literature, in mythology — and we learned about and discussed end-of-life situations, our encounters with death in our own lives, mourning, and the stages of grief.

I learned some things about myself, as I tend to, I suppose. I think it was a milestone in a grand journey to discover just how out-of-touch with reality I am. (Not that I’m any less out of touch now than I was then, it’s just that I’ve lost touch with different aspects of reality since then.) We had a cool art project where we were asked to draw what we imagined death was like, and we were given colored pencils. :D

The thing I drew was … interesting. I imagined something that started out kind of like a hooded cloak, but blue, green, yellow, and swirly, like a whirlpool. I thought about it a while, and it occurred to me that the image was coming to me from Dr. Seuss’s McElligot’s Pool. Death is kind of like McElligot’s Pool — it could contain anything, maybe everything, or it could be nothing but a shallow pool. Who knows?